Archive for the ‘acta’ Tag

The ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) is a secret, multi-national treaty to “to the increase in global trade of counterfeit goods and pirated copyright protected works.” In other words; it’s (amongst other things) another try to regulate Internet communication and stop so called ‘Intellectual property piracy’, e.g. unlicensed copying.

The first funny thing about ACTA is that our elected leaders are trying hide what they are doing. Now I might be wrong, but the first thing about democracy is transparency; if you don’t know who’s doing what, how else do you know whom to kick out of office? Fortunately, in Switzerland we have the possibility of a referendum, but still; what the fuck? Working in secrecy on international agreements and then trying to force it down our throats? Go die in pain.

The second funny thing about the ACTA is it’s futileness. Even if the big media corporations (who else do you think could have an interest in such an agreement) are successful in convincing our own governments to play kindergarden cop because they themselves are unable to cope with a changed environment, it will be a pyrrhic victory; the harder such laws are enforced, the stronger the opposing reaction. Governments forcing providers to cut off their own customers will just drive those customers into the Undernet. Anonymous encrypted peer-to-peer networks with network storage capability? Here we come. Trying to stop that will break the internet. And not even Big Media can afford that. Sure; bandwidth will be small, in the first few years. But hey; I remember a time of 5kB/s, I can cope with it again.